A few quick hits today:

The Jesus Lizard's Liar. Most people, when they look at me, think I'm probably one of those types who, if they get into music at all, go for the Kenny G, lite-jazz, adult-contemporary pablum - the type of stuff that people who don't really like music get into because it gives them something to stand behind when conversations steer toward music interests. (Of course, these same people don't realize that the very fact of listing the likes of Kenny G, et al., exposes their true inner apathy toward music.) But no, my true interests tend to be quite a bit more extreme than that, and out at the edge of my interests is the Jesus Lizard. It's aggressive, forboding, angry music by a band fronted by a man who sounds like he can just barely sing and does so with his hands clenched around his mouth lending a muted dullness to the edge to his yelping. I actually really enjoy the Jesus Lizard because, well, their lyrics are pretty funny. Disturbing, but funny. In an age where many bands proudly wear faux anger on their sleeves, a band like Jesus Lizard is sadly nonexistent, having broken up a few years ago. Because what most of the today's bands lack is the pure, very real menace a band like the Jesus Lizard could muster without the slightest bit of work. Menace is the Jesus Lizard's MO. And when they do work at it, as on an album like Liar, the menace is deafening.

Tortoise + the Ex's In The Fishtank. On the complete opposite side of the spectrum is Tortoise, who isn't really menacing at all but is certainly mesmerizing. This is one of those bands that, once I locked into what was going on behind their music, I found that I understood what was going on in a lot of other bands I hadn't really "gotten" up until then. It was because of Tortoise that I finally "got" bands like Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips, Sparklehorse, to name a few, and it's not really because the music is similar - it's really not, other than tending to be more introspective. It's really more the sense of humor all these bands share, in addition to some similarities in the sprawling, indie-movie road-trip feel their music elicits from me. All of these bands share something else - being quickly labeled "quirky" by everyone who hears them. These three bands share very similar, "Neil Young after inhaling helium" vocals (Tortoise being an instrumental group,) but it's really the quality of the music that I find really affects me. Like the road-trip I mentioned before, these bands all invoke a kind of dream-like quality in their music, Tortoise playing up the droning elements moreso than the others. It's this kind of music I always find myself wishing I had more of - because what I have is never enough. This particular outing is actually a sort of dueling-band collaboration with The Ex, a short twenty-two minute display of how two essentially completely different bands can interact. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't - some of it simply wanders off into pure noise land, and a couple times the two bands really mesh up nicely.